The present invention relates to a towable truck provided with a rotatable platform, suitably designed for approach and copenetration by intermediate transportation means for automatically transferring aircraft cargo units, such as containers, pallets, igloos or the like, for their transportation from the aircraft to the stores or warehouses and vice versa.
Aircraft are currently loaded and unloaded with the aid of three types of freight handling units:
aircraft loading and unloading elevators; PA1 intermediate transportation means; PA1 trucks with a fixed or rotatable platform.
Taking for example the operations involved in unloading an aircraft (the procedure is obviously the reverse for loading), these take place in the following manner. The unloading elevator is positioned to correspond with the aircraft hatch, and the cargo units are transferred thereby on to the intermediate means. The intermediate means shuttle to and from a row of trucks to transfer the cargo units to them, which then transport them to the warehouses or stores. In special cases, the intermediate means can be dispensed with, and the cargo units be transferred directly on to the trucks by the elevator.
The known intermediate transportation means and trucks are designed such that their respective floors are usually brought alongside each other for transferring the cargo units from the intermediate means to the trucks or vice versa. This arrangement therefore means that the responsible personnel have to effect these transfer operations manually, with a consequent considerable employment of labour.